How to Use Anki With Sentence Cards You Say Aloud

Read this English line: "Where is the train station?" Cover the page and say it in your language. Then look back and check: ¿Dónde está la estación de tren? in Spanish, Où est la gare ? in French, or Wo ist der Bahnhof? in German.

That was one review. This page shows how to build a card for it, how to review it out loud and how many new cards to add. Anki's buttons and menus come from its own manual. The card layout and the numbers are this site's House routine, untested with learners.

What goes on a sentence card?

The English goes on the front. The sentence in your language goes on the back, with where you found it and a short note.

Anki's manual calls a card like this a production card, since it asks you to produce the foreign words. The other direction, foreign words on the front, is a recognition card. This site starts with production because speaking is the goal (House routine).

The picture is a Spanish card, Tatoeba 549015, whose English says "train station." The table is a German card, Tatoeba 544538, whose English says "railroad station." Each keeps its own source's wording.

Keep it to one short sentence a card. The manual says shorter cards are easier to review, and it advises language learners against long lists of single words. It also says shared decks work best as a supplement to what you learn elsewhere. So build your own cards from sentences you met. Sentence mining shows where to find them, the first 1,000 words gives common words to look for, and the input menu helps you pick what to read or hear.

How do you set it up in Anki?

Anki stores what you type as a note, and a note holds fields. A card type decides which fields show on the front and which on the back. Here's the setup, with the menu names from the manual.

1. Make one deck for the language. The manual says decks work best for broad topics, not for a single lesson.
2. Make a note type. Go to Tools > Manage Note Types, click Add, base it on Basic and name it after the language.
3. Set the fields. Click Fields... and rename or add fields until you have Sentence, English, Source and Note.
4. Set the card. Click Cards.... Make sure the front template shows only the English field, and put the Sentence, Source and Note fields on the back, as in the picture above. Check the front before you add notes, or you'll be reading the sentence instead of saying it.
5. Add a note. Click Add, check the note type and the deck at the top, fill in the fields and press Ctrl+Enter (Command+Enter on a Mac).

Put Sentence first. Anki checks the first field for duplicates, so it will warn you if you add the same sentence twice.

Tags help too. The manual's own example tag is check_with_tutor. It fits this use well. Give that tag to any sentence you're unsure of, then bring those to your next lesson. The tutor agenda has room for them.

If you also want a recognition card, the standard Basic (and reversed card) note type makes two cards from one note. This site starts with one card per note to keep the daily count down (House routine).

How do you review a card out loud?

Say the whole sentence before you press anything. Then check it word by word.

The manual says you can use just those two buttons. It also asks you to be strict: an answer that's partly right, but would fail in real life, counts as a fail. This site's line for sentence cards is stricter, the same as for a Cold Say-Back: if one word or one ending was wrong, press Again (House routine).

If you can't come up with it in about 10 seconds, the manual suggests showing the answer and moving on, and its Again covers an answer you couldn't recall. So press Again then too.

One more step from this site (House routine): after you show the answer and before you press a button, say the sentence once more while the back is showing. The button still grades only your first try.

Watch the space bar. The manual says Space shows the answer, and once the answer is up, Space presses Good. Use the 1 key for Again.

Under More while you review, Record Own Voice lets you record yourself, and Replay Own Voice plays it back. The manual says this recording is temporary and goes away when you move to the next card.

The saying counts as Spoken Minutes. The reading and checking don't. The shadowing page has the full rules. Writing new cards sits outside the timer too.

How many new cards should you add each day?

Two, on a day when card writing comes around (House routine). In the 90-day plan, writing cards is one of the jobs that take turns, so on 5 or 10 Spoken Minutes that's about every third day. Set New cards/day to 2 in the deck options, so new cards come in no faster than that.

The manual lists three kinds of daily limit: Preset, which changes every deck that shares the preset, This deck and Today only. Pick This deck if other decks share the preset.

New cards don't stay new. The manual says each one raises your daily reviews for a while, and gives an example: learning about 20 new cards every day can mean roughly 200 reviews a day. Cutting new cards brings that down. If reviews pile up, the manual suggests stopping new cards until you catch up.

Some cards keep failing. Anki calls them leeches. The manual says that when a card has lapsed 8 times, Anki tags the note as a leech and suspends the card, and that both the number and whether it suspends can be changed in the deck options. So check what your deck options are set to do.

The manual's main fix is to change how the card presents the material. For a sentence card, this site swaps in a shorter sentence (House routine), but not one you cut down yourself, since dropping words can break the line. Take a shorter one from a source, copied exactly, or ask a tutor to write one down for you.

If the sentence isn't worth the time, the manual says you can delete it.

Where does Anki fit in a 5, 10 or 20 minute day?

After the Cold Say-Back, never before it. A Cold Say-Back means saying a line from at least a night ago with nothing in front of you, and Anki puts a prompt in front of you. So that comes first, with Anki closed.

In the 90-day plan, cards show up from day 15. Writing two sentence cards is one job, and a run through your older cards is another; they take turns with short audio clips, one job a day on 5 or 10 Spoken Minutes and two on 20.

On a card-writing day, typing the two cards sits outside the timer. Then the job's minutes go to saying those two sentences out loud from the cards you just wrote; if this job's time is left, go around them again. On 20, the plan's second job still gets its own minutes.

Add only those two cards that day. Keep any extra sentences on paper for a later card-writing day, which still gets only two. Log the minutes in the Mile Log.

The manual names Anki, AnkiMobile, AnkiDroid and AnkiWeb as one family of apps, all linked from Anki's official site. Any of them can hold these cards. Use the one you'll actually open.

The menu names on this page come from the manual for the computer version. AnkiMobile has its own manual, and the phone apps may lay things out differently.

Tomorrow, before you open Anki or anything else, say your station sentence once with nothing in front of you. Then check it on this page.